Washington
College after the Fires

By Amy Elizabeth Uebel

“Thy deeds and this with Grecian’s Homer fly”:
The self-perception of Washington College after the
fires

What happens when fire strikes a
college and leaves it devastated? What happens when the
fire destroys not only a few important books, but the
entire collection of the college’s historical documents
and all the housing on campus? Washington College
has faced this issue several times, first in 1827 when
the original college building burnt and again in 1916
when the heating plant caught fire in William Smith.
Each time the fires destroyed the most important
building on campus.[1]
Priceless records were lost, and the libraries were
reduced to kindling for the fire; yet, the college
rebuilt itself each time disaster struck. How the
college perceived and presented itself to the public in
the intervening months (or in the case of the 1827 fire,
years) played an enormous role in the rebuilding
process. This self-perception provides the missing
link in how the college functioned and developed in the
years following the fire. If one only views the
rebuilding process through monetary eyes, much of the
college’s character is lost. Money was vital only
because without it, no building could be constructed.
It is the self-perception and presentation of Washington
College that explains the personality and motivations of
the college, which is something that mathematical
figures cannot explain.

Given the age of Washington College and its connection
to George Washington and William Smith, one might assume
that its
image is the last thing the institution would
have to worry about. After all, Harvard University
and Princeton University seem to have their reputations
and images quite secure. All the ivy and limestone
buildings effervescently scream at visitors and students
alike, “We were here before you, and we will be here
after.” Why is it that Washington College, who is
roughly the same age as the Ivy League Schools, seems to
have such an identity crisis? For 225 years, no
one at Washington has been able to agree on how to
present or even PERCEIVE their own institution.
Some have seen it as the champion of Southern morals.
Others see the institution as the quintessential Eastern
Shore school. There have been times when the
college has been compared to the great Roman and Greek
institutions, and there were times when it was not
compared with anything at all. The only thing that
seems to be agreed upon by everyone connected to the
college is the fact that George Washington gave his name
to the College at Chester. This image, or more
appropriately, the search for an image has defined
Washington College’s history, but this search was never
more apparent than in the aftermath of the two fires on
campus.

The aftermath of the 1827 fire
can be summed up into four words: complete and
utter chaos. The January Tenth fire destroyed the
only building on Washington College’s campus.
Along with the destruction of the building, the fire had
managed to destroy most of the President, Dr. Clowes,
and the Vice-President, Joseph Duncan’s belongings, and
much of the furniture in the west wing that was being
used as a boarding house for the students.[2]
The loss of the entirety of the college’s belongings
sent the Board of Visitors and Governors reeling.
They held an emergency meeting the day after to find
accommodations for the President and his family and a
place to hold classes, but it is clear from the board
minutes that most of the administration was in shock and
had no idea where to start the rebuilding process.
The minutes from the meeting are little more than their
attempt to understand what had happened. They
resolved to find suitable buildings to continue the
college and to write a proposal asking the Maryland
legislature for financial assistance in rebuilding, but
did little else that first meeting outside delegating
the board members, Major Matthew Tilghman and Joseph
Wickes, 4th Esq., the job of collecting the
property that was pillaged immediately after the fire.[3]
Housing for the faculty members was found for Dr. Clowes
and Duncan, and the college was moved into town, but the
board encountered yet another roadblock when they were
informed that they could not receive any more financial
aid (in the form of a lottery) from the State
Legislature. Due to another contract of a previous
lottery with Palmer Canfield, in 1824, “neither they,
their successors or assigns should apply for or obtain
any other grant for a lottery or lotteries from the
General Assembly.”[4]
Without Mr. Canfield’s permission the board could do
nothing to receive more aid, and for reasons
unspecified, his permission was never given to the
college.

Given that few students were
actually paying to attend Washington and there was no
lottery available, there were insufficient funds to
build a new college edifice. Many of the students
were there on scholarships, called Charity Scholars, and
did not pay for their tuition, their books, or their
boarding fees. Without assistance from the state,
the board could do very little except attempt to
continue life as normal in rented houses in town.
They asked Dr. Clowes to follow in the footsteps of
William Smith, who successfully roamed the Eastern Shore
during the college’s infancy and convinced its citizens
to donate money, and solicit aid from anyone who would
donate.[5]
Unlike William Smith, Dr. Clowes did not seem to be
successful in his appeal. Nothing was ever said of
his success at fundraising.[6]

His plea mirrored that of Smith’s ideals in the
beginning. Learning was the battle cry of choice.
An education was the reason for supporting Washington
College. The
Telegraph published his plea saying that,

The Rev. Dr. Clowes, Professor
of Washington College, lately burnt at Chestertown,
Eastern Shore Maryland, has been commissioned by the
trustees of that institution to request and from the
liberal citizens of the U. States towards rebuilding the
edifice. It is the cause of learning.[7]

It was this ideal, that the
college existed simply because it gave people the
opportunity to learn and become educated, that governed
the college. It also was the reason for keeping
the college open for the next twenty-two years, until
Middle Hall was constructed, when there were few
students and just one faculty member for several years
in the 1830s. The idea of education was about all
the college had. There was so little money that
for six years, until 1833, no mention was made about
building a new structure for the college, and a year
later, the administration finally decided to “sell the
rubbish” that was the ruins of the building.[8]
It would take them ten more years to begin building the
new edifice.

The board may have been
struggling to find a way to continue the school, but
they were doing a good job at keeping up pretenses of
normalcy in the everyday running of classes.
Lessons were only suspended for twelve days after the
fire and began promptly on the 22nd of
January under the supervision of the vice-principal, Mr.
Duncan.[9]
Dr. Clowes was already on his way to the capitol to ask
for assistance. Despite the recommencement of
classes in town, and the return to every day life, it
appears that the community was still in shock of the
college burning. For Chestertown and the college
community in 1827, this was destruction of everything
they held dear—the chance to learn and have said
institution in their own town. One of the two
poems written about the fire compares the burning of
Washington College to the destruction of the Roman
Empire. It said,

Why should the goddess Vesta
wield her sway / O’er thee, O Virgil, brightest of thy
day? / The train of heroes in the Roman line, / All
share the same destructive fate as thine; / Thy deed and
theirs with Grecian Homer’s fly, / In trembling ashes
‘neath the clouded sky; / No more within thy walls shall
be entwined / The Wreath of knowledge round the youthful
mind.[10]

This comparison is a fairly lofty statement for a school
that was only fifty-five years old at the time,
especially when this school was receiving little state
aid and was being pushed to the backburner of state
politics in favor of supporting Washington’s Western
Shore sister, St. John’s College.

It was this argument, whether or
not to support both schools, or just one that dominated
the state legislature in March of 1827. They were
debating on whether or not to give Washington the
$10,000 dollars it asked for in order to rebuild.
Several legislators argued that “one college well
endowed, would be of much more utility to the state,
than an attempt to sustain more than one without giving
any one means to enable them to afford a complete
education.”[11]
In their attempt to save stress and money by endowing a
single college in the state, the legislators seem to
have forgotten William Smith’s ideal of having two
colleges that make up an open university system in
Maryland on both shores of Maryland. It simply did
not seem to be a feasible option for the legislators of
both the western and eastern shore. There seemed
to be little pride among the people on the Eastern Shore
that this was a college from their homeland. It
was simply a college where one could go and become
educated, and why endow one that was struggling even
before the fire?

Despite the seeming negligence
of the rest of the country as well as the Eastern Shore,
the college still seemed to see itself as a beacon of
education during this time. When the college was
mourned, it was mourned because now students would have
no place to go to learn if the college foundered
and died out.[12]
Even Joseph Duncan, who lost every belonging he
possessed (outside that of his wife and children),
mourned in his poem more for the loss of a home for
learning than for his belongings. He wrote, “There
are those who mourn for thee, lonely pile; / Who with
thee, have hail’d the Sun’s first smile-- / Who have
sought, in thy shelter, the feast of mind, / When that
orb grew pale in the northern wind.”[13]
It seems that the college did have reason to fear for
the demise of their precious institution. It is
probable that the school stopped admitting students for
two years while they were sorting through the debris and
determining how to continue the college. The
Telegraph published in October 1829 that Washington
was once again opening for admissions under the new
reign of Peter Clark. The Board of Visitors and
Governors advertised that, “The Course of Studies will
include all the parts of thorough English and Classical
education.”[14]
They also appealed to the “liberal patronage of an
enlightened community” that they generously support the
college.[15]

Somewhat ironically, the 1916
fire that struck Washington College has many
similarities to the fire that destroyed the original
college building. William Smith Hall was designed
to loosely resemble the original building, and the fires
happened had such a striking resemblance to each other
that it would make any conspiracy theorist daydream.
In terms of the reaction on campus immediately following
the fire, the burning of William Smith Hall in 1916 is
on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.[16]
The Cain administration’s reaction was nothing like that
of the Clowes administration in the nineteenth century.
William Smith Hall was rebuilt within two years, and the
plans for rebuilding were in place before end of the
1916 academic year. Furthermore, the burning of
William Smith is barely more than a blip on the radar of
Dr. Cain’s administration. The February issue of
the
Collegian reports on the burning of Smith as does
the 1917 issue for the one-year anniversary of the fire,
but there exists few records in the Cain papers and when
the fire is indeed mentioned, it only speaks of it as
“the burning of William Smith Hall in 1916.”[17]
The 1827 fire remained an issue for weeks, months, and
years after it happened. Board meetings were
consumed by finding a way to make the college continue;
yet, Washington College had no problems moving on in
1916. How is it possible that Washington College
went from being crippled and almost completely destroyed
by fire, and then somehow, eighty-nine years later, the
college could suffer just as devastating of a fire and
not even be bothered by it, outside of a few articles in
the county and school newspaper and board minutes?

The main reason for the
difference in reactions is that Washington had finally
come out of its “dark years” as Fred Dumschott has
termed the years during the early 1800s. The early
twentieth century was one of extreme growth for the
college and the college administration was justifiably
proud of it. When the fire did strike in 1916, the
school body was not fazed by the outcome. The
central heating plant on campus was completely
destroyed, as were many of the professors’ belongings
and research. Four thousand volumes were apparently lost
in the library, as was a paper of George Washington’s
LL.D that he received from Washington, several ledgers
from early donors, and a few notebooks kept by students
in 1792. In fact, the only thing that was
apparently saved from the fire was the portrait of
William Smith that hangs in Bunting today and a “few
chairs.”[18]
With such a loss, it could easily be assumed that the
college would find it hard to continue; however, it
seems that the administration under the “efficient,
aggressive manner” of Dr. Cain had a plan to rebuild the
very next day that (once again) involved asking the
state legislature for financial aid.[19]
It was only when the administration realized the college
could not transfer everything to Normal Hall (Reid) that
they gave students a one-week vacation.[20]
After all, it was January and the college could not
function without some heat in the dorms and gymnasium.
Once back, the college did not seem to skip a step.
The students fully backed the college administration’s
asking of money saying in an editorial of the February
1916 Collegian that,

It must be rebuilt. The
State must give us an appropriation. Because the
State may be hesitant to be liberal, it is an
appropriate time for all the men believing and hoping in
the future of Washington College to exert their
political influence in favor of this institution and not
stopping there, by individual subscription make up a sum
which will build a still larger William Smith Hall.
This is a crisis in the history of the college, and let
all good and true men rally to the cause.[21]

This was not the cry of a college that desperately
needed help. Unlike the Washington of 1827 that
desperately needed a new lottery in order to rebuild and
continue the college, this was a college that claimed it
deserved the money from the state because of who they
were,
Washington College. Advancing higher education
is indeed a glorious cause, but any institution can
claim help under the guise of education. The 1916
Washington campus may not have been the Harvard or Yale
of Maryland but they felt that the institution was
equally as important as St. John’s College (if not more
important) and that the state should recognize them and
felt that they deserved the help simply because of who
they were. The students did stress some anxiety
about actually receiving aid in February of 1916 because
the students added another plea in their editorial
saying that,

The present administration has
threatened to cut out its appropriation to Washington
College. When that happens it is going to be hard
sleding for the old Eastern Shore school. It is a
difficult thing for us to understand their motive.
Of course the slogan of Harrington and his men has been
economy and efficiency, but it seems to us that it would
be a foolish public to allow themselves to be beguiled
into believing that economy lay in ruining the finest
college in the state…The men of the Eastern Shore would
have lost just that much by losing Washington.[22]

Money aside, as Washington did
receive the much needed aid, it seems that most students
chalked the entire fire and burning of the
administration building of the college to an
“experience.” They ended the piece describing the
losses by saying that, “In keeping with that thought the
students look upon the loss and inconvenience as a gain
in experience. And look forward with confidence in
the future of our college.”[23]
The students mourned the loss of the books and
documents, but they did not lament it like they did in
1827.

When it came to the rebuilding
process of the college, it is easy to see the college’s
motives, ideals, and aspirations by the architectural
style of the buildings themselves. For example,
Middle Hall, when it was built in 1845, was purposefully
designed as being modest, and yet substantial, but with
a “tasteful copula and belfry.”[24]
The college had grown incredibly from the years
immediately preceding the fire to 1845. There were
now four faculty members, Richard Ringgold, the
principal and professor of Greek and Latin, Franklin
Green, professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy,
the Reverend Clement Jones, professor of Mental and
Moral Philosophy, and Peregrine Wroth, professor of law,
instead of just one faculty member as it had been for
several years under Ringgold’s early leadership.[25]
Furthermore, the college claimed that, “the terms of
entrance to the freshman class and the entire curriculum
of studies were as high as those prescribed for the best
colleges in the United States.”[26]
It must be noted that the new college building was not
even attempting to redo the grandeur and glory of the
first college building. It was to be,

A two story brickhouse, sixty
feet by forty, a cellar under the whole house to be
eight feet high in the clear, four feet of it below and
four feet above the ground. The first story to be
twelve feet high in the clear, to have an entry passage
through the center of the building twelve feet wide, and
two rooms of equal size on each side of the entry, the
adjoining rooms to be connected by a large folding or
sliding door, and a fireplace in each room. The
second story to be ten feet in the clear and in all
respects the same as in the first story. A
stairway from the cellar to the garret. In the
first and second stories the stairways to be in the
entry.[27]

Considering that the original
building was roughly twice the size as this new
building, it would be absurd to think the Board of
Visitors and Governors was trying to re-establish
Washington to its former glory sixty-three years
earlier. What is now Middle Hall was meant to be
modest, sufficient, and practical. The only
extravagant part of the new building, a cupola and
lighting rod with a gold point, was added only six
months, in June 1844, before the college took possession
of the new building.[28]

The college does begin to show
some of its future pride in its history once it occupied
the new building. The students, in order to
celebrate Washington’s Birthday, put on a light show in
the windows of the new building. They arranged
candles in the shape of 1732 in the cupola, a ring of
lights in the garret (now the third floor), the word
Clio was formed in the windows of the second story, and
mathematical figures were arranged on the first floor.
It was reported that the “scene was one of surpassing
beauty.[29]”
In the nineteenth century, the building would have more
than likely been highly visible from town when lit up,
and it is probably the excitement of the new building
and pride in being once again on College Hill that
inspired them to create such a light show.[30]

The pride the new students
showed when celebrating Washington’s birthday in its
inaugural year continued to grow thorough the years.
The school was finally becoming proud of who they were
and not simply seeing themselves as a means to an end.
When 1918 arrived, the college wanted to rebuild itself
in the exact same way it was before the fire struck the
first William Smith Hall. Smith was rebuilt in the
exact same way as before with a few minor changes.
With the $50,000 received from the insurance company,
and another $3,000 paid to the Board of Visitors and
Governors, the college was already well on its way to
rebuilding much faster than it took the Washington
College of the nineteenth century.[31]
In April, the state granted Washington $48,500 to help
rebuild, $28,500 to go to maintenance of the standing
heating plant and the rest to help rebuild the Hall.[32]
With all the money aside, it is most striking that the
college decided to rebuild William Smith exactly the way
it was at its best with three exceptions: the
heating plant was now moved away from the important
buildings on campus, another cupola was to be built on
William Smith (more closely modeling the original
building), and two vaults were added for the safe
keeping of valuable documents.[33]
The administration and students alike felt that William
Smith Hall was a perfect manifestation of their pride in
the college. It reflected what they needed and how
they wanted to look to passersby.

It’s hard to imagine such an important part of ones
school catching on fire and destroying much of the
college’s present and history, and it’s even harder to
imagine how the administration would react to the
catastrophe. Would they panic? Would they
see it as time perfect timing to revamp the college and
give it a new image? Would they flounder as
Washington did in 1827? Or, would they be more
like Dr. Cain’s administration in 1916 and simply
rebuild exactly the way the college was and continue as
if nothing was amiss? It’s impossible to tell what
would happen today, but what is certain is that, when
looking back at the following days, weeks, months, and
years after the fires, the college’s hopes, ideals, and
ambitions come out in how they go about rebuilding.
Washington College in 1827 was overlooked and under
funded. When disaster struck, they almost folded
(but not quite). The 1916 Washington saw their
fire and the destruction of their library as unfortunate
and somewhat annoying, but in the end another experience
to chalk up and prove to the world that they were a
force to be reckoned with and NOT be overlooked like
they had in the past. In the eighty-nine years
that passed between the two fires the college changed:
it went from being small and on the verge of meltdown to
being well known and confident. Most importantly
though, Washington College found it’s identity in the
ashes of its fires.

[29]
I also imagine that the faculty was extremely
proud of the students for using intellectual
figures to decorate the windows. It’s
doubtful that the students, no matter how geeky
they are, would decorate their windows with
mathematical figures. History of
Education in Maryland, 90.

[30]
The picture of Stepney farm in the entry of
Bunting shows the visibility of the college, it
is quite probable that Middle would have been
just as visible in 1845.

[31]
Although I must admit, I’m not entirely sure why
the board received the additional $3,000 a few
weeks later. No place seems to specify the
reason for the additional money. Kent
County News February 19, 1916, Miller
Library Archives, .Folder: Cain
Administration Notes.; “Fire Insurance Paid”
The Enterprise, Wednesday, February 23,
1916.

[33]
There is something about this college and their
love of adding cupolas on top of buildings.
Board Minutes, May 26, 1916, Miller Library
Archives, .Folder: Cain Administration
Notes.; Dumschott, Washington College,
162.